Lillo-Martin Diane, de Quadros Ronice M, Chen Pichler Deborah, Fieldsteel Zoe
Department of Linguistics, University of Connecticut Storrs, CT, USA ; Haskins Laboratories New Haven, CT, USA.
Departamento de Libras, Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina Florianópolis, Brazil.
Front Psychol. 2014 Oct 20;5:1163. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2014.01163. eCollection 2014.
Bilingual children develop sensitivity to the language used by their interlocutors at an early age, reflected in differential use of each language by the child depending on their interlocutor. Factors such as discourse context and relative language dominance in the community may mediate the degree of language differentiation in preschool age children. Bimodal bilingual children, acquiring both a sign language and a spoken language, have an even more complex situation. Their Deaf parents vary considerably in access to the spoken language. Furthermore, in addition to code-mixing and code-switching, they use code-blending-expressions in both speech and sign simultaneously-an option uniquely available to bimodal bilinguals. Code-blending is analogous to code-switching sociolinguistically, but is also a way to communicate without suppressing one language. For adult bimodal bilinguals, complete suppression of the non-selected language is cognitively demanding. We expect that bimodal bilingual children also find suppression difficult, and use blending rather than suppression in some contexts. We also expect relative community language dominance to be a factor in children's language choices. This study analyzes longitudinal spontaneous production data from four bimodal bilingual children and their Deaf and hearing interlocutors. Even at the earliest observations, the children produced more signed utterances with Deaf interlocutors and more speech with hearing interlocutors. However, while three of the four children produced >75% speech alone in speech target sessions, they produced <25% sign alone in sign target sessions. All four produced bimodal utterances in both, but more frequently in the sign sessions, potentially because they find suppression of the dominant language more difficult. Our results indicate that these children are sensitive to the language used by their interlocutors, while showing considerable influence from the dominant community language.
双语儿童在幼年时就会对与他们对话者使用的语言产生敏感性，这体现在儿童会根据对话者的不同而区别使用每种语言。诸如话语语境和社区中相对语言优势等因素可能会调节学龄前儿童语言分化的程度。同时习得手语和口语的双模式双语儿童的情况更为复杂。他们的聋人父母在接触口语方面差异很大。此外，除了语码混合和语码转换之外，他们还会在言语和手语中同时使用语码融合——一种双模式双语者独有的方式。从社会语言学角度来看，语码融合类似于语码转换，但也是一种在不抑制一种语言的情况下进行交流的方式。对于成年双模式双语者来说，完全抑制未被选择的语言在认知上要求很高。我们预计双模式双语儿童也会觉得抑制很难，并在某些情况下使用融合而非抑制的方式。我们还预计社区中相对的语言优势会成为儿童语言选择的一个因素。本研究分析了来自四名双模式双语儿童及其聋人和听力正常的对话者的纵向自发语言产出数据。即使在最早的观察中，这些儿童与聋人对话者交流时产出更多的手语话语，与听力正常的对话者交流时产出更多的言语。然而，虽然在言语目标会话中，四个孩子中有三个单独产出言语的比例超过75%，但在手语目标会话中，他们单独产出手语的比例低于25%。所有四个孩子在两种会话中都产出了双模式话语，但在手语会话中更为频繁，这可能是因为他们觉得抑制占主导地位的语言更困难。我们的结果表明，这些儿童对与他们对话者使用的语言很敏感，同时也受到占主导地位的社区语言的显著影响。
